Put the toys back in the cot & dry your eyes... :)

Avoid it happening next time.... lift off whilst hitting the round about (best if wet) lift off the throttle & plant it!! (My prefference is in 2nd gear ensuring you hit full boost quickly) (3rd gear if I have my steel balls that day)

Works for me.... ;)

LMAO at ozzy :D

Agree with John also, its understeer.
I would say a front end skid is where you are on the brakes and turning in, and its the combination of steering angle and braking thats causing the lose of traction, just turning and loosing grip is understeer.

Gary

Sorry if I started something... :(

LOL
It's Scoobynet mate.

So is it decided then?

Severe understeer causes a full on front end skid, mild understeer is a smaller front end skid.

Traction has nothing to do with it, grip does.

A rear wheel drive car has no front wheel traction ever, it can understeer by losing grip tho'.

Understeer.

Simon.

BMW Rallying.com

ROFLMAO - a front wheel skid IS understeer, thats the definition of it...there can be many causes of it of course.

'Front end skid' tends to happen when going slowly, understeer is a 30mph+ kind of thing which is relatively easy to recover from as described earlier in the thread. Understeer is easy to turn into very bad understeer or front end skid if your car has power steering and you apply more lock. I have suffered 'front end skid' in my forester on numerous occasions, and it really does feel like the front end has just given up gripping, even though the road doesn't appear to be that slippery. Very bizarre.

So when your crawling (<10mph) along in icy/snow conditions and you turn the wheel and go straight on that's not understeer..!!! :cuckoo:

It's all understeer..!

A tyre's foot-print has only so much grip in any direction.

Let's say a tyre has 10 cabbages worth of grip (bare with me on this..!), if you are braking or accelerating and using say 6 cabbages worth and at at the same time try to turn, adding lateral grip that exceeds the remaining grip available (ie 4 cabbages) the tyre's grip capability will be exceeded and you will skid (usually continuing in the direction the car was travelling immediately prior the loss of grip.

At the front of the car this is understeer pure and simple..!

Anyone for a cabbage..?

Agreed.

I don't care for cabbages or understeer.:)

If you're travelling in a straight line without ABS, and you stamp on the brakes, that's a front end skid only.(Ignoring the rear wheels for the purpose of this explanation). If you then try to steer, obviously it won't and that is then understeer. (Albeit caused by muppetry with the brakes)

If you're applying steering lock and the front tyres don't steer the car as much as they would if they were on rails, then that's understeer. No matter what the degree of 'slip' or severity.

The speed is irrelevant.

It's quite logical really, it's not (ie under or less) steering as much as it should due to slippage/skidding, therefore it is under steering.

In actual physical terms, all cars are understeering all the time when the rear wheels are 'in line' and any steering is applied. Some linear input is always lost through the tyres when applying a steering adjustment.

Mild understeer or severe understeer, is all understeer.

And cabbages are for rabbits, small rabbits or large rabbits, they're all rabbits and they all eat cabbages. (And Carrotts).;)

Simon.

BMW Rallying.com

It sounds as if Tony and John are talking about slightly different circumstances.John-more driving in low grip/wet conditions and Tony in no grip/icy ones.

:rolleyes: FFS read the thread above from M3Compact.

If you're going in a straight line and you lock up your front brakes and slide on in a straight line, then that's a front end skid.

If you have any lock on and the car, for whatever reason - braking too hard, accelerating too hard, cornering too fast, hitting ice, hitting diesel, etc, etc, at whatever speed - then it's ALL understeer.

For instance "I understeered off at just 5 mph, but when I went back and looked at the corner I found it was sheet ice, which explained it.."

Speed has nothing to with it, understeer is the state where the lateral forces on the front tyres have exceeded the lateral grip they can generate on whatever surface they're on, so the car goes sideways instead of forwards. End of.

Is that directed at me?I know what understeer is-I drive a FWD Clio and have a GTiR.Both understeer as standard although the Clio only really does it in the wet.

Yep, because you implied that the difference in the surface meant that it either was or wasn't understeer, whereas the surface/grip is not the issue.

It's whether the front tyres lateral load has overwhelmed the available grip or not, whether the surface is "no grip/ice" or "low grip/wet". If it has then it's understeer.

I'm sure you experience understeer regularly with your cars but the whole topic of this thread has been "is this understeer?" What Tony describes IS understeer.

What I meant was that they seemed to talking about slightly different conditions on the road-I didn't comment on the understeer.

I've changed the setup of my GTiR so that it no longer understeers and I don't drive the Clio fast in the wet as it's pointless.I hate understeer!!!

oh my god! (janice from friends style)...as a competition licence holder (so i know what i'm talking about)...

ANY TIME THE FRONT END SLIDES/DOESN'T TURN/WHATEVER IS UNDERSTEER!

...is that clear enough yet?....even if you lock up and go straight on its still understeer. loads of different causes of it, but the end result is the same.

front slides = understeer (or if you're american you can call it 'push')
rear slides = oversteer (or if you're american you can call it 'loose')

I agree with that 100%.

Any time that the front loses grip you are going to understeer whether it's under power/under braking or nothing it's still understeer.

If the rear of the car looses grip for any reason again that's oversteer.

It is that simple :D Oversteer is alot more fun though :norty:

thanks paul....you still got the vr6?

Hi Andy.

The VR6 actually belongs to my Fiancee and yes she still has it. I'll be at the next stokenchurch meet in a week or so in it :) Do you still have yours and are you going to the meet?

Definition
skid [Show phonetics]
verb [I] -dd-
(especially of a vehicle) to slide along a surface so that you have no control:
Trevor's bus skidded on some ice and hit a tree.

From the official source, the dictionary.

Tony:D

Understeer

i have still got my POS vr6, still not reliable yet (it really is getting silly, don't get me started)...using my lovely £90 mkII golf gti at the mo (gotta love a car that costs that little and just keeps going).

may make an appearance, but have to see how warm it is!

tryin to save for a house at mo, then gonna get an extra £10k on mortgage for a scoob!

Nope not understeer, no control = skid, control = understeer, though some books state its understeer you will never hear the likes of an F1 driver say he understeered off the track, its always skidded off, no control of the car, a difference, slight but noticeable, which is what we are talking about, the difference between control and no control, not just grip and no grip.

Tony

OK, to finish this argument, the correct meaning of both words, skid and steer.

Definition
steer (DIRECT) [Show phonetics]
verb
1 [I or T] to control the direction of a vehicle:
She carefully steered the car around the potholes.
This car is very easy to steer.

and now..........

Definition
skid [Show phonetics]
verb [I] -dd-
(especially of a vehicle) to slide along a surface so that you have no control:
Trevor's bus skidded on some ice and hit a tree.

Notice the subtle difference, control and no control, 2 meanings that people are getting confused over, simple to do but different outcomes.
Remember, skid = no control, steer = control.

Tony:D

I thought Under Steer was a scene from Animal Farm;).

Tony, are you arguementative for fun or do you really believe the rubbish that you've just posted?

Either way, you are publicly humiliating yourself to anyone that knows the first thing about driving.

I find it both amusing and alarming that people driving powerful 4WD cars don't grasp the concept of understeer.

If it steers too much relative to steering input it's oversteering.

If it steers less than the steering input it's understeering.

Don't you understand that?

I post on BMW forums where they frequently take the pi55 out of 'rice burners' and their 'chav' drivers. I defend the rice burners because I am aware of their capabilities, I also own one.

If I were to post a link to this thread they would all have a field day, and rightly so.

Simon.

BMW Rallying.com

yeah, this is scaring me somewhat.


same if i posted this link on cgti.

The Definition of the above = complete bolx. I'm assuming from your smiley that you know you're talking pish and are just trolling now. In which case :D too.

If not, then " Nurse, get the men in white coats..."

You forgot the part where if it doesnt steer at all, the point im making, yes cars do over and understeer, they also skid, the skid become apparent when the forward momentum outplays the sideways forces, in which case you carry on in a straight line, now if you think this is understeer then your the complete muppet as you have no idea of driving dynamics, unless of course all cars grip all the time, thus making understeer and oversteer the only thing a car can do :rolleyes:
Now if you actually see what the guy did, go on to a roundabout and turned the steering wheel and the car carried on..... if you think thats understeer :rolleyes: then id love to hear you explain that to a policeman if you ever had an accident.... "sorry officer, i understeered off the road", well i think you would be getting 9 points for reckless driving.
Of course i keep pointing out that the difference is control and no control, if you can control a car which is out of control due to physics then you must be a miracle maker lol!
Skid = not in control
Steer = in control
Understeer = in control
Oversteer = in control
Car = a machine to be controlled to do what you will it to do by putting in imputs on the steering, accellerator and brakes.
Out of control car = when an imput into the car doesnt make the car do what your asking it to do, ie the driver has NO CONTROL, of course to you its either under or oversteer :rolleyes: as your always in control of the vehicle.

Tony

sorry tony, with all due respect you're talking utter cr*p...if the car carries staright on its understeer simple as that. whether you crash or not is irrelevant.